Some Questions Left Unanswered


In the company of the municipal officials and some punong barangays, I went to pay my last homage to the remains of Nay Lagring yesterday. Her bereaved sons, Fr. Reynold and Bongbong were there to receive us. In the course of our conversation, my bolano asked me some clarificatory questions about my recent post here concerning the destruction of Balete in February 9, 1901 (Coincidentally, Nay Lagring gave up her spirit of February 9, 2012). As I listened to him, it dawn on me that there is so much to research and write about to fill up the empty spaces in the storyline of our local history.

I recalled that when I was starting with this ambitious task of ferreting out those lost memories of the Baleten-on people, I initially listed down some questions to guide me in this quest. Hereunder are some of those entries in that list:

  • Why is that that the patron saint of Balete is an archangel (St. Rafael) when the rest of Aklan and Capiz are historical persons?
  • How true are the claims of venerable men and women like the late Nay Lagring that a church made of bricks and goso used to stand on the site of the present Balete church? Who were responsible for its construction? When was that? 
  • If it is true that Balete used to have a church made of bricks, it goes to tell that that church was a powerful or rich church as bricks was not endemic of the place and that in the Aklan valley during the Spanish time, only the Calivo church was made up of similar materials. The rest were either made of stones (Malinao, Batan and Tangalan for instance) or light materials. 
The list of questions goes for several pages and there are more flowing like the pristine clear water of Jal-o up in the ilaya inside my mind. Precisely that I sympathized with my bolano, not only because his mother has gone up into another stage in her journey but also of the many questions he was throwing at me yesterday morning.

Today, we have lots of questions to ask. Tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, we shall live to realize that we have asked the wrong questions. Maybe.


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